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en-usTechdirt. Stories about "blyk"https://ii.techdirt.com/s/t/i/td-88x31.gifhttps://www.techdirt.com/Mon, 24 Sep 2007 11:31:22 PDT'Free, With Ads' Phone Calls Trying Yet AgainMike Masnickhttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20070924/021714.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20070924/021714.shtmldiscussed a year ago, but which is finally launching. It doesn't appear that they've adjusted their business model (free mobile phone service and they put ads on your mobile phone) since we panned the whole concept. Similar efforts haven't gone very far, so it's difficult to see this suddenly getting much traction.

Perhaps even more interesting (though even less likely to get anywhere) is another company, named Pudding Media, that wants to offer free phone calls in exchange for displaying contextual ads on your computer. Yes, the company is claiming that it will use voice recognition to listen in on your calls, determine what you're talking about, and then pop up relevant ads on your computer screen as you talk. The obvious comparison is with Google's contextual AdSense (specifically within Gmail). However, early on people were pretty creeped out by the contextual email ads, and it would seem like people are even more likely to be creeped out by voice recognition systems parsing phone conversations. On top of that, there are so many options now for people to get cheap or flat-rate calling plans, that you have to wonder if this type of solution will really attract many users. The company is likely going to focus on bolting its contextual ad solution on top of other providers, but that really depends on how well it actually works. It appears the company is launching at DEMO this week, which I'll be attending, so I'll try to test it out and see.